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Metro Matters;Going Private To Clean Up The Highways

PEOPLE are not very good at realizing what is not there, even if the unseen used to be annoyingly inescapable. A guide, then, to the absent.

Next time you're traveling on any of the highways in New York City, notice what is missing. Notice the absence of filth. Garbage, so long a permanent fixture of the city's roads that the sloppiness was a national embarrassment, has done a disappearing act. Not everywhere; some roadways remain as dirty as ever, especially because of illegal dumping. But there has been a noticeable change in just a year.

The reason is an experiment in privatization called the Adopt-a-Highway program. It is common throughout the country, but new to New York. A California-based company brought it to the city early last year, and it has, with the encouragement of the Giuliani administration, grown.

Most people aware of Adopt-a-Highway may assume it is a charitable undertaking involving volunteers wielding brooms. In fact, highway-cleaning is a profit-making business. It involves no government money, no unions, none of the rules, regulations -- or worker benefits -- that often accompany government contracts. Because there are no contracts. The city checks the qualifications of private sanitation companies seeking the work, conducts a background check and grants permits.

THREE companies approved by the City Transportation Department do all the work. They solicit the contributions, hire the workers and supervise them. Sponsors -- celebrities like Bette Midler and Robin Williams and companies like Nynex, WAXQ (104.3 FM) and Chock Full o' Nuts -- get credit on signs planted beside the roadways. The blue and white signs are only 6 feet by 4 1/2 feet but stand out because they are set mostly in areas devoid of regular advertising.

Ms. Midler, who has made cleaning up the city something of an avocation, said she is using her celebrity not for publicity but to engage others. "I'm really trying to be a company person," she said. "People say, 'Oh, Bette Midler has a sign. I'll get one too.' "

The first signs went up in April 1995. Since then, 155 of the nearly 351 adoptable miles of the city's arterial highways, from the Long Island Expressway to the Belt Parkway, have been sponsored by 115 individuals and companies. The company that cleans most of the adopted roads, the California-based Adopt a Highway Maintenance Corporation, charges $10,000 a year for each mile.

"It's a real win-win," said Peter B. Morin, chief executive officer of the company. "People get a chance to give something back to the community, and it provides good exposure."

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He brought his idea to New York after Richard A. Jalkut, president of Nynex, saw the signs on California highways and made inquiries. Soon, Mr. Morin met with receptive transportation officials in the Dinkins administration, and when City Hall changed hands in 1994, Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was just as interested. The city's highways were in dreadful condition. Most are owned by the state, which gives the city money to maintain them. But City Hall always complained that the money was inadequate and all but abandoned highway-cleaning years ago.

NOW, what was once the responsibility of city workers is a job for people like Gabino Herrera, one of about a dozen men combing the grass with a Litter Grappler (a pole with tongs) along the Van Wyck Expressway one recent morning, near the Jewel Avenue overpass. Earlier, they had hauled more than 200 illegally dumped tires out of a ravine.

Most of the laborers are recent immigrants with few skills and little English. They earn $5 to $5.50 an hour, depending on seniority, work nine-hour days, five days a week, and get time and a half for overtime -- but no vacation time, sick leave or health benefits.

Mr. Morin, whose company also participates in a similar but smaller state project in New York, said he would like to pay benefits but cannot afford to. That is a subjective judgment for any profit-making company. Indeed, the idea of nonunion workers -- only 50, all told -- performing a city service might seem likely to stir controversy. It has not.

Stanley Hill, president of District Council 37 of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, which represents highway workers, sounded unconcerned. "I think workers should be unionized and get full benefits, but I haven't gotten any pressure from my presidents," said Mr. Hill, referring to presidents of his union's locals.

Richard J. Schwartz, senior adviser to the Mayor, said there is no issue. "These people are getting jobs that didn't exist a year ago," he said. "It's money we don't have, work that wouldn't be done, work that hadn't been done for many years."

City Hall's goal is to get the remaining 196 miles of highway sponsored in the next year. Mr. Herrera, who emigrated from Mexico three years ago, has a goal of his own. He would like to earn more money and get benefits, but mainly he wants to stay employed. "Jobs are scarce," he explained. "And I like to work."